How to clear AWS Solutions Architect — Associate exam?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a leading name in the world of cloud service providers. Big companies like Netflix, NASA, SONY and so many others use AWS to build their system and deliver quality service to the end users. Instagram’s system was based on AWS before it was acquired by Facebook. There has been a lot of progress in the field of Cloud-native development and it is bound to increase more in the coming years. In this scenario, it becomes vital for a developer to upgrade their skills and master cloud-native development. Once you have mastered these skills, it also becomes important to get your skills validated and certified by AWS to show the world that you are ready to solve emerging tech problems with your cloud skills.

AWS offers a range of certifications for different domain expertise on its cloud solutions. Here, in this blog, I will explain the Solutions Architect (Associate) Certification which also happens to be one of the most popular amongst the developer community.

What's the Exam About?

Solutions Architect — Associate is a very popular certification offered by AWS that allows one to validate their cloud knowledge on AWS.

A solutions architect is simply a person who creates the overall technical vision for a specific solution to a business problem. They design, describe and manage the solution. In many ways, this person builds the bridge between a business problem and the technology solution and outlines each of the phases and requirements required to make that solution work.

I took this exam in August 2022 and successfully cleared it on the first attempt. In this article, I share with you my experience and some tips to prepare for this exam and clear it without many hurdles.

The very first principle for clearing any exam is understanding the demand and pattern of the exam. So let's look at what this exam demands from you and how to prepare for this.

What Does the Exam Look into You?

In the words of AWS — this exam is intended for anyone with one or more years of hands-on experience designing available, cost-efficient, fault-tolerant, and scalable distributed systems on AWS.

So in nutshell, you must be familiar with important AWS services and should have good hands-on experience in designing scalable and available systems on AWS. In reality, if you just have a look at all the available services that AWS offers, you will get overwhelmed but do not worry, this exam requires you to just have a breadth of knowledge on a well-defined subset of services and not all the services.

Exam Pattern

1. There is a total of 65 questions, all of them Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) type. Some of the questions have only one correct answer while some might have more than one correct answer.

2. You get 130 mins to complete the exam.

3. There is no negative marking for choosing wrong answers.

4. But, there is a catch! Not all of the 65 questions are scored to calculate your final score. Out of 65, 15 questions are “unscored”, which means even if you answer these correctly, they will not add up to the final score. As per Amazon, these questions are put to collect information about candidate performance on these unscored questions to evaluate these questions for future use as scored questions. These unscored questions are not identified on the exam. One must keep in mind this fact while preparing for the exam.

5. The exam result is reported on a scale of 100–1000 and there is a passing criterion of 720. It's a pass-or-fail exam. The scores are scaled and normalised to account for different factors and maintain a level playing field among all candidates.

For a detailed guide on the exam and topics please refer to the official site — https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-solutions-architect-associate/

Topics Covered in the Exam

There are majorly Four broad areas of content that the exam focus on -

1. Design Secure Architectures
   Security is one of the most vital parts of any application these days. Recently, AWS has given this domain maximum weightage in the exam. You should target to learn how you can secure your cloud solution using different AWS services like IAM, WAF, Shield, Security Groups, Encryption etc. For example, in the exam, you can be asked which service will you choose to secure your application against a DDoS attack.

2. Design Resilient Architectures Under this domain, you will be tested against designing resilient, loosely coupled and highly available architecture using AWS services. So on a high level, you can learn about three-tier web architecture, EC2, ECS, EKS, SQS, Availability Zones, Auto-Scaling Groups, Load Balancers, Disaster Recovery approaches etc

3. Design High-Performing Architectures This domain mainly focuses on high-performing cloud solutions where you need to learn about databases, networking solutions, compute solutions etc. Name a few services like DynamoDB, Aurora RDS, Cloudfront, VPN etc will be covered under this domain.

4. Design Cost-Optimized Architectures
   When building cloud-native solutions, the cost is a very crucial factor. You must have read about instances where some companies have gone bankrupt overnight if the cost was not monitored properly. It's very common to spin some service over the cloud and forget about it. So cost factor is always there when you are designing any solution on the cloud. Don't consider it as a separate domain but try to practise it whenever you are choosing any services for the above three domains.

AWS keeps on changing the weightage of these domains every few years, so please refer to the official website for the latest updates.

Study Resources

1. Udemy Course by Stephane Maarek
   This is such a concise and beautiful course to help you understand different AWS services and prepare for this exam. Every module has a practice quiz that helps you assess your learning while you progress through the lectures. At times, it feels monotonic to sit and watch the lectures but yeah you can take a break and start with the topics which are easy to grasp and are not too lengthy to cover. But, at least try to cover the whole course and don't refer any other material. This course has everything you need to clear this exam.

Check this udemy link for the course.

%[https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-saa-c03/]

1. Practice exams
   Stephane Maarek and Abhishek Singh have designed this practice exam course which is almost similar to what AWS asks in the actual exam. Try to attempt these exams once you are done with the above course. After giving an exam, go through all the wrong answers, check their solution and revise the topics where you are failing. This is a recursive process — give the exam, highlight your weak topics, revise the above course, and give the exam.

   Check this udemy link for the practice exam.

   %[https://www.udemy.com/course/practice-exams-aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate/]

2. AWS Docs and FAQs section
   AWS has so many services and each comes with FAQs and elaborate documentation. Whenever you start learning any new service say EC2 or RDS, go to the official page for these services and skim through the FAQ section. Many of the questions come up from these sections so it's important to at least go through these sections once before you appear in the exam.

3. Whitepapers
   AWS has whitepapers on well-architected frameworks (WAF). These papers help you to understand what good practices can be followed in designing architectures on AWS. While it is recommended to read whitepapers, I think for the associate-level exam if you are thorough with the above resources, that's more than enough to score well. But, if you have time and want to get more feel about the exam, there is no harm in going through these whitepapers.

4. Practice
   This exam requires a lot of hands-on practice. Simply taking a course and cramming facts won’t help you to clear the exam. One might pass the exam, but it's not useful if you can not design a well-architected system on AWS. Be curious and try different services to learn more about them. After reading about a service for example S3, go to the AWS console, explore different options available there and try to play around.

Focus Areas

AWS indeed has so many services that one can get overwhelmed. They have a service for virtually anything possible in the tech world. This does not mean that you need to know everything on AWS. You will realise that you only need to study a very niche area for this exam. The questions will mostly revolve around EC2, S3, Cloudfront, Auto Scaling Groups, Load Balancers, Security, VPC and Databases. I know, if you are a first-timer it would sound overwhelming but once you start preparing please focus on these important areas. You don't need to be an expert on these, but you should have sound knowledge of how to pick these different services and design scalable and available solutions for different business problems. You will find questions from some more low-level topics but these are the topics where you can't afford do go wrong.

The Exam Day

Schedule your exam well in advance, and keep your room clean and table well organised. Check your internet connection. Try to get a schedule as per your suitability. Usually, the exam schedules are available throughout the day, so finding a slot that fits you is not a big deal.

I made the mistake of not scheduling the exam in advance so I got a very odd schedule. I attended this exam at 10.30 PM and these days I am no more a night person. I have a habit of sleeping early, so it was a bit challenging for me to be awake and focus on questions. And yeah you are not allowed to sip coffee while appearing in the exam. So don't make this mistake, scheduling the exam is equally important as preparing for this exam.

In the final exam, focus on keywords and try to identify which services are best for the given problem. You can also mark the questions you are not sure of and attempt them in the last. Keep a track of time. Try the elimination method to pinpoint the correct answer. Sometimes, the options are vague and if you have prepared sincerely it will be easier to eliminate such options and get the correct answer.

If you have followed the sources I mentioned, you will do good in the exam.

What Next

If you don't pass the exam, do not lose hope! Think about what went wrong and focus on the weak topics, prepare smartly and try again.

If you clear the exam, congrats! Now you have validated your AWS Cloud skills and you are ready to build amazing solutions using different AWS services. Don't stop here. Start digging deeper into the services which you learnt and think about different system designs on AWS. Come up with your solutions for the most challenging tech problems or re-design existing solutions. For example, think if you were asked to build Instagram on AWS, how would you come up with a solution that is highly scalable, available and cost-effective.

If you are appearing for this exam, don't just appear to pass. Appear for it with a curiosity to learn and build something new. Be innovative and use this exam to validate your knowledge of AWS.

And yeah, here is my cool AWS-SAA badge :-) You also get one when you clear the exam!